Lausanne World Pulse – Communications among International Christian Leaders
By Phill Butler
Regional annual meetings or networks are increasingly connecting practitioners and specialists internationally. COICOM (communications) and COMIBAM (missions) serving Latin America, and MANI (Movement For African National Initiatives) serving all the sub-Saharan African countries are examples. Many more exist and space limits a comprehensive list.
Additionally, more than a dozen regional gatherings, most of them annual, bring together like-minded individuals committed to collaborative approaches to evangelism and church planting. From the Tibetan Buddhist Peoples and Minorities of SW China, through Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa, these consultations regularly see between two people and four hundred people gather to assess developments in the region and to pray and plan together for greater effectiveness.
A troubling question is how many of these venues actually attract the leaders—the decision makers? How many denominational, mission or other essential Christian CEOs or ministry executives are present? And, if and when they are present, is there any encouragement or motivation for them to meet and share around the problems unique to their leadership role?
Internationally, groups like the World Evangelical Alliance, with members in 128 countries, and a resurgent Lausanne Movement have sought with varying degrees of effectiveness to provide the “macro” context where leaders can meet.
The face-to-face options the secular networks and associations provide are augmented by a blinding array of enewsletters, electronic audio and video conferences and other electronic/Internet empowered means for sharing, educating or planning. The numbers of commercial companies providing similar services for these specialized sectors grows daily. Connecting and informing leaders is big business!
In the Christian community a comparatively small number of electronic helps (enewsletters, audio/video based services, etc.) are focused on the leadership community.
In the Christian community a comparatively small number of electronic helps (enewsletters, audio/video based services, etc.) are focused on the leadership community. The largest of these, not surprisingly, seem to be collected around the local church and the pastor’s role in it. This is Christianity’s biggest “business”—dwarfing even Christian broadcasting and publishing—and certainly the missionary sectors.1
Motivation and Standards
There is a historic, biblical, justifiable sense of responsibility and accountability in the Christian leadership community—to God, to the donor, to their own team, to the Board of Trustees and, in some cases, to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA, a “standards” agency in the Christian sector). Motivation born out of kingdom obedience, vision or calling can and does drive leadership to examine their performance and that of their organization. Our view of the Great Commission, the nature of evangelism and God’s plan for redemption drives much of this. Our constituencies’ views on these subjects often drive the perceived standards of performance and communications about that performance. Rarely is it “industry” standards or “market forces” that drive Christian leaders to talk with one another.
In science, business and education, reputations, professional longevity, competitive market position, stockholder satisfaction and personal income are regularly at stake. It is a harsh, unforgiving world. The monthly and annual bottom lines never go away and motivation is frequently highly personal. But, even in this highly competitive climate, the accounts of leaders communicating with and helping other leaders fill textbooks and make up case histories are common.
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